A variety of web-based interactive photo-animation applications are available on the Internet. There are several types of these applications, each purporting to provide one or more services such as: “Easy Animation”, “On-Line Animation”, “One-Touch Animation”, “Make your own animation”, “Creation of Avatars”, “Photo-Realistic Animations”, “Photo-Realistic Avatars.” Existing web-based interactive photo-animation applications may be categorized as follows:
Facial cut out applications provide interactive options to cut out the face of a character on a photo uploaded by a user. This face is then inserted into a pre-prepared animation or video clip. Examples of such applications are available over the Internet from JibJab Media Inc. and Gizmoz Inc., both of the United States.
Redressing applications provide interactive options to customize a cartoon animated character. A user can create customizable characters by choosing eyes, hair, and skin tone as well as shirt, pants, shoes and other accessories. An example of such an application is “Zwinky”, available from IAC Search and Media in the United States.
“Image-me” from the United States provides an online tool to generate a speaking myspace avatar from a face photo. “Sitepal” (http://www.sitepal.com/) provides customized (cartoon-like) speaking avatars to be inserted into commercial sites. With these applications the user can also choose eyes, hair, skin tone as well as shirt, pants, shoes and other accessories. In addition, photo images can also be transformed into speaking avatars.
A number of web-based applications are available for the production of limited animation clips. Such applications typically provide users with choices for the background and the addition of library characters and artifacts which can be interactively translated and rotated. Examples of such applications are “Fluxtime” (http://www.fluxtime.com/index.php) and “Animasher” (http://www.animasher.com).
There are also some Web tools for “morphing” and “merging”. These tools allow the user to produce animation clips presenting the morphing of a character's face, or merging two faces or objects into a single image. Examples of such tools are “Fantamorph” (http://www.fantamorph.com/), “Funmorph” (http://www.funmorph.com/), and “FaceFun” (http://www.dolsoft.com/Product/DownloadFaceFun.htm). Some of these tools provide a limited control of facial expressions, for example, “Cartoon.Pho.to” (http://cartoon.pho.to/).
Interactive video-clip applications utilize pre-prepared combinations of video-clips in order to provide a user with interactive choices of actors, scenario, etc. For example, the site “KnickerPicker, online dressing room” (http://www.knickerpicker.com) proposes an online dressing room where the user can pick the most appropriate photo-model and then to “redress” her according to the selling suggestions.
PCT application IL2008/001205, assigned to the common assignees of the current invention, describes a system and method for the modelization of objects in images that provides solutions for automatic and interactive fitting of image objects with relatively complicated models such as typical human models.